The White Elephant is like no other comic I’ve ever read before. This graphic novel is a stage play on paper, realized with a “widescreen” page size, minimal sets, and nicely used perspective of the stage and the “actors.” The reader is easily pulled into the world on stage, and just like watching a live play, you forget you are even watching something happen on stage—or paper—its just that present.
The book follows Gene as he talks with a doctor about the reasons behind his anguished dreams and sleepless nights. While Gene is in therapy, he moves in and out of the past he is reliving, trying to deal with the almost insurmountable grief and guilt associated with his sister’s molestation as a child by a relative.
The sketch-like drawing style captures Gene’s tortured psyche. The darkness and sometimes surreal portrayal of events and feelings reveals a deep hurt.
Gene has had to let go of his extended family, and specifically his very close cousin Johnny, because of the family’s failure to recognize the white elephant—the molestation that occurred in their own family. Gene’s pain runs the gamut of guilt to anger and comes out, or is internalized, in different ways.
Although most people realize that sexual abuse is not just an isolated incident that simply “happens” and that victims feel the ramifications of this their entire lives, Hurd makes it clear here that the molestation of one person leaves numerous victims. Gene will never be the same again and the relationship with his extended family, which he clearly loved and still loves, is irreparably broken.
I sincerely hope this book is not overlooked by readers or for awards. Most books, comics or not, you may read once and later remember the general plot or a feeling you had while reading it, but this one will stick with you. This is a book not to be forgotten once read, and I encourage everyone to read it.
Touching, tragic, and beautiful, The White Elephant is one of the best, and toughest, graphic novels I’ve ever read. I hope you will pick it up.
By Erin M. Schadt
